


One More Time

by SabreCat



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Drama, Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 15:32:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13367676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SabreCat/pseuds/SabreCat
Summary: Horrified by Chloe's suffering in the alternate timeline, Max makes a second attempt to use her newfound power to establish a satisfactory history. A canon-compatible vignette inserted in the early part of Episode 4.





	One More Time

**Author's Note:**

> This fic first appeared [on the blogging platform Steemit](https://steemit.com/fanfic/@elseleth/life-is-strange-episode-4-one-more-time-a-fanfic-demiboy-vs-backlog-game-5) on January 5, 2018.

Chloe's eyes glinted with a kind of peaceful determination, filling Max with a heartbreaking mix of sympathy and horror. "You know what I'm asking, Max." She was ready for this adventure, and for all adventures, to end.

"Chloe, I can't! I can't kill my best friend!"

"Sure, you can. It's simple. Just turn that IV up to eleven." She tilted her head toward the morphine drip above her shoulder, without taking her eyes off of Max. It was the most she could possibly gesture without the use of her body below the neck, but it said more than Max could take.

Max lurched to her feet, knocking the photo album askew on the bed. "I have to go." She turned away, fighting tears.

"Fine then! Bail on me, just like everyone else has!" Chloe said to her retreating back, in what would have been a shout if not for the deteriorating state of her lungs. "Don't bother coming back here. Ever."

Max staggered down the stairs from Chloe's room until she reached the bottom, then stood there dizzy for a moment, gripping the end of the railing. _This isn't right!_ she thought. _I refuse to accept it. With the expanded power I've found, I can fix this too!_ She rushed to the dining area, where William still sat hunched over a stack of medical bills.

He looked up. "Max, are you all right? You look like you've--"

She stopped herself by grabbing the back of a chair with both hands. "When was Chloe's accident? What was the exact date?"

William blinked in confusion, but the answer was ready at hand. "July. July 8th of 2011. Max, what..?"

But she was already headed for the door. "I'm sorry, William! I'm sorry for everything!"

The bus ride back to Blackwell felt interminable. Max sat with her heart pounding, and flinched every time her phone buzzed with an incoming text. From William, then Victoria... she didn't even bother reading them. If she pulled this off, none of it would matter in a few minutes anyway.

When the bus stopped, Max ran out full tilt, headed to her dorm room. Faces showing concern, words of greeting and question--she whipped by, ignoring them all. She opened her door, ducked in, and shoved the door shut again, practically diving for her portfolio. There _had_ to be something that would work. All she needed was a picture of her from the right time period. Had she been diligent enough about writing dates on everything?

 _There."_ A selfie with Lake Washington and Mercer Island in the background, from July 7 of that year. She pulled it out of the binder, hands shaking, and sat down on her bed to focus on it. For one terrified moment she thought the power wasn't working, that it was lost to her as quickly as it had come--but then the telltale headache began, and the picture in its little Polaroid frame started to wobble and shimmer. The world around Max streaked and glowed, as if hurled into a fireplace.

And an instant later, there she was, standing in West Bellevue, three years younger again. Her mind reeled, memories of events that had no longer ever happened draining away, untethering her from the alternate world she'd briefly inhabited. But she clung to one thing: she had to see Chloe, and stop her from getting into that car tomorrow! She pulled her phone out of her bag, a bass drum sounding in her ears. The number was disused, fallen out of her "frequent" contacts, but there it was in her master list where it had always sat delivering periodic doses of guilt. Max initiated a call and held her breath.

After three rings, the line connected. "Max? Oh my God, is that really you?"

Max nearly choked with relief. "Chloe! Yes, it's me. I'm so sorry it took so long--"

"Goddamn right you should be sorry, I thought you'd forgotten I existed!" There was real pain in that voice, but enough good humor that hope was not lost. "How the fuck are you?"

"I'm good, Chloe, I'm good..." She paused a beat to consider how to accomplish her next move. "I... heard you got a car?"

"Hells yeah! Birthday present. My dad's the best."

"He really is. Um, could I come see it? Like, right now?"

"What? Aren't you still in Seattle?"

"Yeah, but I'll get to you somehow. I'll catch a flight or a bus or a train or something. Please?"

Chloe laughed, a sound more refreshing than the breeze coming in off the bay. "Max Caulfield, where did this impulsiveness come from? Have you changed that much since you left?"

"Uh, yes and no. We've got a lot of catching up to do, right? Just don't go anywhere until I show up. OK?"

"Sure, sure, I'll wait up for ya. We can roadtrip together in my sweet ride."

"You promise? Don't leave the house until I knock."

"Okay Max, now you're starting to weird me out. What's going on?"

"I'll explain when I get there. Just promise! We're still best friends, you trust me, right?"

It took a second, but Chloe came through, a muted puzzlement in her voice. "All right, yeah, I trust you. I promise I'll stay put."

"Thank you, Chloe. I'm on my way."

Max hung up. _That should be enough. I think she meant it when she said she wouldn't go out._ She called around to make travel arrangements, then unhooked that peculiar rubber band in her mind keeping her in the past.

The years blurred forward. New memories stacked into place, backfilling between that new-written July 2011 phone call and the present day. Max came back to herself on the Blackwell campus, wracking her brain, searching to see what had changed and if this timeline had at last settled into something she could live with.

Then she saw Chloe. She was standing by the entrance to the boys' dormitories, side by side with Nathan Prescott.

Max jogged forward, her heart already beginning to sink. Chloe had the blue hair of the present-day incarnation Max knew and loved, but her style was otherwise much more severe: dark slacks, a plain white T-shirt, and a blazer. She looked more like a professional bodyguard than a punk rocker. And there was Nathan, who upon seeing Max approach broke into a shit-eating grin.

"Hey Max. Like my new pet?"

Instead of shoving Nathan onto his ass for the insult, Chloe seemed not even to notice, instead turning to Max with hard eyes. "Don't come any closer, Caulfield. You and your friends won't mess with Nathan any more while I'm around."

Max stopped dead. "Chloe, what? I don't understand..." But even as she spoke, the retroactive memories began to fill in the gaps. Arguments. Shouting matches. Drugs. Nathan getting his claws into her with money, connections, harder hits. She and Max had grown apart, and into the crack the Prescotts seeped. Max had ensured that both Chloe and her father William survived to today, but now they weren't even speaking to one another.

"You're dead to me, Max. Back off." It was Chloe's voice, but was it in the present moment, or a recent retro-memory?

Were five years of silence necessary to her and Chloe's friendship? Was William's death?

Max backpedaled, turned, ran, with Nathan's derisive laughter bouncing off the back of her head. In the distance from one quad to the other, her mind desperately sought options, paging through scenarios like her search for that July '11 photo. Could she leave it like this? Chloe and William alive and well, at least sort of? But with Chloe steely and distant, under the Prescotts' control...

A lone rogue snowflake spiraled through the air, eddying in the wind of Max's hurried motion, and flew past her ear.

No. Whatever the fate of individual lives, there was something bigger going on in Arcadia Bay. Something brutal and terrible and apocalyptic. And without Chloe's help, there was no way Max would ever get to the bottom of it in time. No one, not William nor Warren nor Mr. Jefferson, could possibly step into that same role. Chloe--the real Chloe, the first Chloe, the one she'd known before her first rewind--completed Max like no one else. She was essential.

With leaden feet and hanging head, Max returned once more to her dorm room and her portfolio, and retrieved the picture of her and Chloe as children. She wiped away tears and tried to focus, one more time. _I'm sorry, William._

...

_"Oh, I didn't know you needed to get groceries. Sure, I can pick you up..."_

**Author's Note:**

> This fic doesn't change anything about the "canonical" or "final" _LiS_ timeline you get from playing the game--the alternate-history rollback happens just as it does in the official text--but adds something I felt was missing. It felt weird that Max wouldn't at least _try_ a second time to get a satisfactory history going with her awesome new power. I can understand why they didn't do that, though, as at best it would have added extra bloat to an already lengthy episode!


End file.
